intelligent, and eager for instruction, and their course of study by no means unfits them for the usual childish sports. Night schools flourish where the child may continue its education after leaving school, or the grown-up person may acquire that instruction which in early life he or she has been unable to obtain.
There are excellent training schools for teachers of both sexes. Many of these are Mixtecs and Zapotecs from the Southern States, the descendants of a highly civilised people who did much to spread the use of the old native calendar, the source of all native wisdom, throughout Mexico. In all these schools, not only instruction, but books and other apparatus are entirely free, even in such of the training colleges where the students of the professional classes resort.
The Mexican peon, when educated, does not seek to abandon the labour of his forefathers. He does not, as a rule, desire to become a clerk or to exchange his zarape for the black coat of commerce. This attitude may be regarded as lacking in ambition. On the other hand, it may prove his wisdom in avoiding the pitfalls of the life of the lesser bourgeoisie.
The foreign policy of Mexico has greatly varied with its Presidents. It certainly has not sought territorial expansion, one of the most fertile causes of international strife; but it has fiercely combated all foreign aggression on its own soil, as was shown during the French attempt at domination The Foreign
Policy of
Mexico. and the American invasion. Its official attitude towards the United States has, in recent years, been calm and dignified in face of a most difficult situation. Unintelligent opinion everywhere lays the outbreaks and slaughter in the North at the door of the official classes in the South; and one has even read leading articles in journals of good standing, which profess to be well informed, to the effect that Mexico must be classed as regards her type of civilisation with Turkey or Germany. The folly of such a statement is extreme, and could only have been penned in utter ignorance of the
